This article attempts to examine the activity of the Bolshevik Party amongst the working women of Petrograd in 1917, and in particular the conflicting Bolshevik attitudes towards work amongst women. The study has been limited to Petrograd, because the situation there, while not typical, was of vital importance. The Petrograd Committee was a major policy-making body within the party, and a wide spectrum of attitudes towards work amongst women existed at this time within the Petrograd party, and a wide spectrum of attitudes towards work amongst women existed at this time within the Petrograd party. The major primary sources used for this article were the 1917 editions of Pravda, and 13 issues of Rabotnitsa, from May 1917 to January 1918.

Popular conceptions of the politics of Robert Owen have changed surprisingly little since the early nineteenth century. Within a short time of the advent of his national campaign for Poor Law reform, Owen came under attack from radical parliamentary reformers on the grounds of his ostensible political conservatism. Among the rumours then afloat among the reformers, Richard Carlile later wrote, one was “that Mr. Owen was an instrument of the Government, to bring forward this plan of providing for the lower and poorer classes, for the purpose of drawing their attention from Parliamentary Reform”.